Can giving employees a choice stop cyberloafing at work?

There’s an insidious problem lurking at employees’ desks across the working world, costing U.S. businesses, by some estimates, hundreds of millions of dollars each year.

It’s called cyberloafing, and if you surf Facebook, shop on Amazon or pay bills online during the work day, you may be guilty of it.

Cyberloafing, a term that’s come into use in the last decade or so, refers to employees using the Internet at work for personal purposes, said Matthew McCarter, an associate professor of management at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

In a study that simulated data entry work, McCarter and his colleagues found that cyberloafers became more productive when their working group was given a choice to turn off the Internet, instead of having a manager make the call.

“This illusion of (worker) control is a very powerful strategy for managers, and that is one of the big takeaways,” McCarter said.

At some workplaces, attitudes about keeping workers off the Web are changing, especially as the lines between work life and home life blur, said David Hughen, principal and managing partner at Austin HR — especially at smaller companies.

“Our guidance is, typically, manage performance at the end of the day,” he said. “It may be in the middle of the night that they're doing their best work on behalf of the company, so why police them in that moment if overall they're doing great?”

Some research suggests browsing at work can be beneficial, making employees feel happier. But cyberloafing may not fit in at all workplaces — in some professions, work needs to be handed off efficiently from one worker to the next, Hughen said.

In McCarter’s study, subjects were given a data entry task under three different conditions. In each group, workers were paid a flat rate for showing up, but received a bonus based on how much work the group, as a whole, completed.

Members of a control group who could check email or browse the net at any time spent, on average, about 14 percent of their time cyberloafing.

The second group had a manager-like figure who could shut off the Web. That stopped cyberloafing, all right, but it also tended to stop cyberloafers from getting work done.

“(Some) people who had been loafing, they would literally just sit there idle, staring at the ceiling,” McCarter said. “In other words they were being spiteful, it would seem.”

In the third group, workers were allowed to vote to turn off the Internet. Almost every time this scenario was conducted, they did, and the workers who had been distracted by the Internet ultimately became as productive as the workers who never strayed off task.

“Everyone was working just as hard when they were given a voice,” McCarter said.

McCarter’s research does not suggest workers should be barred from the Internet, he said, but it does suggest that if managers find a way to let workers feel that they have a choice in workplace policies, they may be more effective in reaching goals.